This application relates to an airfoil for use in a gas turbine engine wherein the airfoil has a body formed of a molded plastic and a reinforcement formed by additive manufacturing.
Gas turbine engines are known and, typically, include a fan delivering air into a compressor. Air is compressed and passed into a combustion section where it is mixed with fuel and ignited. Products of this combustion pass downstream over turbine rotors driving them to rotate.
The compressor section and a turbine section include a plurality of rotating blades. In addition, there are typically vanes positioned intermediate rows of the blades. The blades and vanes include airfoils.
The airfoils are relatively expensive to manufacture and are heavy. There are also a large number of airfoils at each stage which require an automated repeatable manufacturing process.
Injection or compression molding of thermoplastics, or thermoset resins, produces repeatable low cost lightweight products, however, they generally lack structural performance.
Recently, additive manufacturing techniques have been developed that allow for repeatable and complex geometries to be formed from metal that would otherwise be very expensive to manufacture. However, these techniques lack dimensional control and also have undesirable characteristics in surface finishes.